Just another of those unexpected little consequences of his marriage.
After his wife's arrest, Ronall had finally discovered who she really was and why she had married him. She had poured an enormous amount of his money into her rebel cause and used his family's Valdani connections to help Josarian the Firebringer. And she had spread her legs for every man who could help her—or so Advisor Borell told Ronall, in his rage.
Remembering it now, Ronall quipped, "He was so furious that my wife had cheated on him."
Ronall thought this over and started laughing. The more he thought about Borell's red-faced rage over the promiscuity of the married woman he'd been bedding, the funnier it seemed. Tears misted his eyes as his shoulders shook with bitter amusement. In his slack-limbed mirth, he spilled his wine. Dazed, his vision not quite in focus, he watched the chalice roll across the floor.
"Enjoying yourself, I see." Elelar's chill voice pierced his muddled reflections.
He whirled to face her, staggering a little as he did so.
"Elelar," he whispered.
He had barely seen her upon her arrival. She'd uttered a few angry words about the intruder he'd hit—Three Into One, how was he supposed to know it was Derlen, suddenly appearing out of nowhere after months with no word from Elelar or any of her escaped servants?—and then she'd gone up to her bedchamber, barring the door and telling him she would see him when she damn well felt up to it and not before.
Now he saw that she was as lovely as he remembered, even lovelier than the day they'd first met nearly seven years ago. Her softly waving black hair was pulled away from her face, braided and coiled in the elaborate style of a torena. She had never taken to wearing Valdani fashions, as did so many Silerian toreni in the city, not even after marrying into Ronall's family. And how her shapely body flattered the flowing lines of her silk pantaloons and the long tunic that hugged her lush breasts and slim waist. Her dark, long-lashed eyes still transfixed him after all these years. Her soft, wide mouth still made him hungry for her. Yes, he had seen more beautiful women, but he had never known one with his wife's allure.
"What are you doing here?" she asked with all the warmth and charm of an executioner.
He had also never known a woman who could so easily make him feel like something to be scraped off the bottom of a boot.
Ronall replied, "I thought you would come in here after you—"
"I don't mean in the library," she said impatiently. "I mean here."
He was a little confused. "I live here."
"This is my house," she snapped.
"I'm your husband." He peered at her. "I've been living here for six years."
"What could y—"
"You haven't, though," he continued. "You've been gone since before the long rains. Since before Josarian supposedly leaped into the volcano of Darshon and survived."
"He did leap and s—"
"Where in the Fires have you been?" Ronall demanded.
"In the mountains, obviously."
"What do you mean, 'obviously'?" Suddenly he was angry. Hotly, head-spinningly angry. "You escape from prison—with a body count that made the Fifth Moorlander War look like a minor squabble, I might add—and disappear for months. And you send no word and make no effort to let me know you're alive, let alone where you are."
"As if you wouldn't be watched," she spat.
"Watched? I was imprisoned, damn you!"
Elelar paused. "I know," she said in a more moderate voice. "I'm sor—"
"You know? How do you know? Who told you?"
"Advisor Kaynall."
"Kaynall? When did you have time to talk to the Imperial Advisor who was appointed after Borell killed himself because of you?"
"During peace negotiations," she said tersely. "But what are you still doing in Sh—"
"Peace negotiations?" Ronall repeated. "Ah. For your rebels. They want peace, do they?"
"They want the Valdani out of Sileria."
"Negotiations," he mused. "Josarian's giving Kaynall a chance to withdraw before Shaljir goes up in flames?"
Elelar went terribly still and stared at him, looking uneasy.
"Before thousands of Outlookers die here?" he continued. "Empire's last stand in Sileria, and all that." When she didn't reply, he asked, "Josarian thinks he can talk them out of fighting for it?" Ronall snorted and bent down to pick up the chalice. "He doesn't know the Valdani very well, does he?"
"He... He's..." She turned away from him and moved toward the fire.
"What?" When she didn't reply, he prodded, "Are you sleeping with Josarian, too?"
To his surprise, she merely said, "No."
He struck out again. "Lost your touch?"
She shook her head, staring into the flames. "He always belonged to the memory of his late wife. To her and to Dar."
Ronall thought he'd heard her wrong. "Belonged?"
Now she looked at him, her eyes churning with something so terrible that he wasn't surprised when she finally said, "Josarian is dead."
He digested that for a moment. "Valdani?"
"No."
"Silerians?" he asked incredulously.
"The Society."
"Ah."
"Kiloran."
Ronall nodded. "Well, that figures. If what they say about Josarian was true..." He shrugged. "Who but Kiloran could eliminate the Firebringer? And one Silerian killing another..." He sighed. "Nothing ever really changes here, does it?"
Her temper frayed a little more. "What are you doing here?"
He flinched at her tone. "You and I are not the only couple in Shaljir who share a house without sharing a bed," he pointed out.
"I mean, why haven't you gone home?"
"I will not let even you shame me into scurrying back to my father's house like a child, Elelar." Ronall swayed a little and muttered, "I'm sobering up. This is no good." He found the decanter and poured more jasmine wine.
"I didn't mean your father's house," she said. "Though that would be an acceptable start."
He swallowed a life-giving, hurt-soothing gulp and said, "Huh?"
His wife's mouth tightened. "I mean, why haven't you already left for Valda?"
"Valda?" he repeated blankly.
"Yes."
He stared at her in confusion. "I'm not planning..." He wondered if he was drunker than he'd realized. "Valda?"
"I didn't think you'd be here."
Or maybe he just wasn't drunk enough. "Where did you think I'd be? In prison still?"
"Valdani are fleeing Sileria by the thousands," Elelar said wearily, sinking into a chair without her usual grace.
"May the Three have mercy on them," he said, finishing his wine and reaching for more.
"Why haven't you left, too?"
"Leave Sileria?" He finally understood. "For Valda?"
"Yes." She sounded exasperated. "How many cups of that wine have you already had?"
"Far fewer than you've had men," he said nastily.
"When it came to fidelity," she struck back, "I followed your example."
"How I've missed you," Ronall said dryly. "I only hope we have enough wine for me to get through this reunion." He sat down in a chair opposite hers and tried to focus for a moment. "Elelar, I've never even been to Valda."
She made an impatient gesture. "Somewhere in Valdania then, wherever your—"
"I've never been to the mainland."
"Wherever your people come from."
"They come from here."
"Your father's people," she clarified.
"They come from here, too."
"They are Valdani," she said between clenched teeth.
"And like many Valdani in Sileria," he said, "I've never been off the island. Not once in my life."
"Nonetheless, it's time to go," she said. "You don't belong here."
Her words hurt him, but for once he didn't think they were personal. In this matter, he wasn't her despised husband, he was his bloodline. He was the Valdani stain on Silerian
honor, the Valdani seed in a Silerian woman's belly, a Valdani name with a Silerian face. And given the woman that he had recently learned Elelar was, he realized that he was an anomaly she couldn't accept.
"Go?" he repeated. "Go where, Elelar? To a city I've never even seen, to a mainland empire nearly as foreign to me as the Kintish Kingdoms would be?"
"You will not be a foreigner there, you—"
"I look like a Silerian." He was a little fairer than most full-blooded Silerians, true, but no one would take him for a Valdan. Not with his coloring and features. "And I speak better Silerian than Valdan."
"Not really," she muttered rudely.
"When I speak Valdan, I have Silerian accent." He knew she couldn't deny that. "Just like you."
"Even so—"
"I don't know the mainland, or their ways, or their culture."
"You are not a Silerian," she hissed.
"I'm not a Valdan, either." He took more wine and then concluded, "If I'm not going to belong anywhere, I'd rather not belong in the country which I know than in the foreign lands that I don't."
She sneered. "You think the rebels will spare you when they take the city."
"So you're positive they'll take it?" His wife was more likely than any else he knew to be informed about the rebels' true strength.
"Kaynall will give it up or they will take it," she said. "Either way, we will have native rule in Sileria, Ronall."
He saw the passion in her eyes and knew she wouldn't understand when he said, "I've never cared who rules Sileria."
Elelar's contempt was as familiar as it was painful. "No, as long as you're protected by your rank and your wealth—"
"That's right," he admitted. Why deny it?
"As long as you've got liquor in your cellar, dreamweed in your pipe, and women in your bed—"
"Though seldom my wife."
"Never again." Her voice was low and rough. "You will never touch me as a husband again."
He knew she meant it. He had even been expecting it. But he still couldn't accept it. "We are still married. We still need an heir, and—"
"Divorce me."
The room seemed to tilt. "What?"
"You heard me," she said. "Divorce me. It's an easy enough matter for a Valdan. Claim that I'm barren. It's probably true."
"We were also married as Silerians," he reminded her. A mixed-blood couple, they had married twice in one day: once before a priest of the Three, and once before a Sister who witnessed them reciting vows to Dar.
Seeing how deflated she looked, he said, "You shouldn't have married me under Silerian law if you were planning—"
"I didn't know what would happen, what the future held! I had my position to think of. I couldn't share a man's bed without—"
"How many beds have you shared?"
"I mean," she said with obvious irritation, "I couldn't live respectably as your wife without a Silerian wedding."
"So now, even if I divorced you as a Val—"
"If you leave Sileria," she said, "I can claim abandonment and dissolve the marriage when you don't return after three years."
It was, he knew, one of the few ways to end a marriage in Silerian custom. The Valdani didn't care whether or not Silerians stayed married to each other, but Silerians themselves were inflexible about such things. This was a land where blood-ties and family alliances mattered even more than wealth, rank, or property.
"I see you've thought this through," he said.
"We've never had children," Elelar continued, warming to her theme. "There's no reason—"
"No!" Ronall didn't want to hear this. "I'm not leaving Sileria, Elelar, and I'm especially not leaving Sileria just so you—"
"—for us to continue this—"
"No!" he shouted. He rose to his feet, swaying, and flung his half-full chalice across the room. It flew into a delicate sculpture and broke it in a smashing shower of noise.
Elelar gasped and jumped up. "You drunken—"
"That's right," he snarled, smarting under her openly disgusted glare. "That's right. I'm the drunken, whoring pig you married, the fool you robbed, the cuckold you betrayed again and again."
"I won't st—"
"I'm the only one who shares your bed by right of law—"
"You will never—"
"You're my wife!" he shouted, seizing her by the shoulders.
"Torena!" It was a man's voice.
Ronall glanced over his shoulder and saw Derlen in the doorway. Then Faradar, bless her insolent little heart, tried to drag the Guardian away, saying, "No, Derlen, no. Let the torena deal with this."
"I went to prison for you," Ronall growled at Elelar, shaking her as he spoke.
"And you sobered up there, according to Kaynall," she said breathlessly. "Why couldn't you have stayed that way?"
He didn't know. Dar help him, Three have mercy... He didn't know why. He had intended to try. But his good intentions had dissolved as soon as he was released from prison.
"Torena?" That idiot Derlen still hadn't gone away, and Faradar's soft chatter urging him to do so was getting on Ronall's nerves.
Elelar's shoulders were firm under the fine silk of her tunic. Her black hair gleamed in the firelight. A flush of anger showed on her soft skin, which was darker than that of a Valdani woman but exquisitely fair by Silerian standards. She smelled sweetly of whatever scent she'd used in her bathing water upstairs. She was his wife... and he felt his body quickening in response to the knowledge, to the hunger that had assaulted him a thousand times in her presence and which would rule him until the day he died.
Her breasts swelled luxuriantly against the thin silk of her tunic with every panting breath she took as she stared up at him with those wine-dark eyes. He thought of their marriage bed, now cold and empty for so long. He remembered the warmth of her breath on his naked skin, the feel of their bare bellies pressed together, the damp friction of her thighs... His head swam with urgent passion.
"This..." Her voice failed her and she tried again. "This is usually the part of the evening where you rape me, isn't it?" Her tone was rich with loathing.
It had the intended effect. His desire shriveled like parchment going up in flames, until nothing was left but ashes.
He released her and turned away, swallowing the familiar potion of shame, hurt, and humiliation which Elelar knew so well how to brew for him.
He saw Derlen gaping at him from the doorway, his jaw hanging open. Faradar, who had been with Elelar since before their marriage, was more accustomed to such scenes; she just looked steadily at the floor.
Ronall was pretty sure he felt embarrassed, but a little more wine would wash that away, so he didn't dwell on it. However, he was done amusing the servants.
"Go away," he ordered.
Derlen didn't move. Ronall decided it was a good enough reason to hit him again, and so he did.
Derlen cried out and fell back against Faradar, who recommenced trying to drag him away. Ronall noted with pleasure that the Guardian's nose started bleeding again. On the other hand, now his hand hurt.
More wine, he decided.
Ronall slammed the door and went back to the decanter. It was only after he had drained an entire cup that he realized Elelar was still in the room with him.
"Why are you still here?" he asked.
"I believe that's what I've been saying."
"You shouldn't have married me." He said it to blame her for their predicament. But he reflected on the statement and realized what a profound truth he had just uttered. "You shouldn't have married me."
"Probably not, but as long as I'm stuck with you..."
The room was reeling. The wine was working. He felt better—which was to say, he felt less. And feeling less had been his primary interest for as long as he could remember.
"Are you listening?" Elelar asked.
He realized she had been talking. He'd heard none of it. "Hmmm?"
"I want you to do something for me."
That
struck him as wildly amusing. He burst out laughing. The long-suffering patience on his wife's face was so uncharacteristic that it made him laugh even harder. He tumbled sloppily into another chair, spilling wine all over himself, clutching his side when it started to ache.
Ache. That was bad. It meant he could still feel something.
"Wine," he muttered.
"You've had enough."
"Wine," he insisted.
"In a moment. In fact..." Elelar picked up the decanter and waved it enticingly just beyond his reach. When he made a clumsy grab for it, she backed away. "I'll give you all you want, and even get the servants to go find more at this Darforsaken hour, if..."
More, he thought, more.
"If?" he prompted.
"If you'll go to Santorell Palace tomorrow," she said. "There's an assassin there named Searlon whom I must speak with in private, without Kaynall knowing about it."
Ronall didn't understand, but it didn't matter. "So?"
"I know you don't care who rules Sileria," she said. "But you probably don't want to see Shaljir destroyed."
"No," he agreed, "I don't."
"All the taverns," she said. "All the brothels, the gambling halls, the—"
"How can an assassin save all that?" Ronall asked, longing for the decanter.
"He's going to help me convince Kaynall to give it all up," she said. "No matter what I have to do."
Ronall heard those words and discovered he could still get angry. "Not in my house, Elelar."
"This is my house," she reminded him.
"Don't bed him here." He feared he would beg, and he didn't want to. "Don't bed him in my... in this house."
She looked surprised. "Searlon?"
"Or Kaynall."
He saw her lush lips curve in a slight smile. "I promise I won't." She shook her head and added, "That is not the bait which will lure either of them. Not these men."
"Then what?"
"That's my problem, not yours."
"My problem is to find this assassin in Santorell Palace?" When she nodded, Ronall asked, "How?"
"Ask to speak to Advisor Kaynall," Elelar said. "Tell him I've returned home. Tell him that, based on something you overheard me say, you think there may be an assassin lurking in Santorell Palace."
The White Dragon Page 19